Can poor readability burn a hole in your wallet? Airtel broadband does it!

It is a must read for those
who use Airtel broadband services in India
who have never analyzed their broadband bills
who still could not decipher the internet usage calculations provided by the ISPs

Just be aware that Airtel broadband seem to be using a simple usability/readability trick to boost their broadband revenues. Usually every user is given a usage cap in x GBs. Once they cross that limit, they would charged in 'pay per MB' model.

Here comes the tricky issue. As per the plan the usage limit is in GB(Gigabyte) unit, but the actual usage reading is shown in a weird nonstandard unit (1 unit =10 KBs). As most users wouldn't take the pain to convert the KBs in to GBs to check their actual usage, that turns advantage to Airtel. Say if you have a download limit of 5GB, you gotta check the usage every day in units, convert in to Gb to be assured that your haven't crossed the download limit. I am sure that 99.9% users wouldn't do this.

I initially thought that it was unintentional, but when I called up 121(customercare) for a clarification, they said that it cannot be changed as per internal policy. When I insisted, they started preaching me the magic formula and asked me to use this everyday to check my usage. here goes the magic formula UNITS*10/1024/1024 !@%#$^%#$*.

well , Can't you automate the system with the same formula and give me usage in Gb? Ans: Sorry, there are 8lacs customers doing this, we wouldn't make an exception for one request.

Just wondering that there was no complaint on this before , almost 8 lac customers were given the same formula to calculate their usage manually. Well, the moral of the story. If you are using Airtel broadband, monitor your usage carefully. there seems to be an evil design that is going to burn a hole in your wallet.

there are 3 ways you could save yourself from the menace .
1. Use the erratic magic formula everyday to check the actual usage
2. You could ask the customercare to introduce a change in their application( but the customer care blatantly refused to take even a complaint on this! ) Take it or leave it :)
3. Ditch Airtel and move on with other operator - That seems to be the most sensible one.


The concerns that I raised in this post aren't applicable only to Airtel. I have experienced poor readability issues in almost every other financial transaction, TAX returns etc... but we turn a blind eye to these small little but critical issues. Is there a way people could fight usability issues through lawsuits? How are you guys coping up with these?!

What you see isn't what you get!